Archive for May 1st, 2009

Do Not Resuscitate: Why the Health Insurance Industry is Dying, and How We Must Replace It
By John Geyman, M.D.

April 30, 2009 by Healthcare-Now

Dr. John Geyman, a longtime physician and professor emeritus of family medicine at the University of Washington, has written several books about health care. In his latest work, “Do Not Resuscitate,” he provides us with a highly informative and critical analysis of the U.S. private health insurance industry. Given the current health reform debate, it could not have come at a better time.

Geyman opens with a startling premise: the current debate of how to pay for health insurance ignores “a profoundly important fact: … the health insurance industry is dying.” Private health insurance, the historical cornerstone of U.S. health care financing, is quite simply “not sustainable and has failed the public interest.”

As evidence, he cites 50 million uninsured Americans; 18,000 deaths annually from lack of insurance; and tens of millions of underinsured persons who would face severe economic hardship were they to get sick. Medical bills contribute to more than half of all personal bankruptcies in the U.S. today; about three-fourths of those had insurance at the onset of their illness.

Meanwhile the cost of insurance premiums goes up and up. If the rate of increase continues, he says, premiums will consume all of an average family’s income by 2025. Yes, you read that right: all of family income. (read the whole story)